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8 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Jay Hafemeister”

How true! And really, any good, patriotic American should welcome the notion of lodging and feeding soldiers in their homes. Particularly homeless vets – we could eliminate a significant portion of our homeless problem overnight if we required everyone to board soldiers. You would have to go before a board and provide a convincing case to dodge this duty, something like “good cause” to receive a pistol permit.

Taking in and feeding strangers would be the “Christian thing to do”, right? It is a good thing, yes? And so therefore it should be forced on everyone at gunpoint.

I think I’ve summed up nearly the entirety of politics right there– Compassion and charity are good, and so they should be forced on everyone with the utmost aggression. When it comes to compassion, no amount of punishment, threats of punishment, confiscation or even mass execution, is too much, because, hey; it’s a good cause. If you get in the way of, or even question, any good cause then you and your family, and possibly your entire neighborhood, deserve to die like rabid dogs.

Isn’t that the basic definition of government in the minds of the Confederacy?

Speaking of things that weren’t meant to protect criminals… how about a real life case where an absolute scumbag got his death penalty reversed because the prosecutor was all “battlefield weapons of war” and “only useful to kill lots of people”… because the scumbag legally owned a CAR-15 that wasn’t used in the commission of the crime.

State v. Rupe, 1984 Scroll down until you find *706. Sorry, old case, no good HTML anchors in it.

Here’s the deal: Rupe richly, richly deserved the death penalty. Hanging, in fact, at the time. One of this guy’s delaying tactics was to go on a Twinkies diet in prison then claim hanging was cruel and unusual because his head would pop off if you tried to hang his 450 pound ass.

BUT, because the prosecutor opened his closing statements to the jury trying to tell them about how you know this was a bad guy because he owned a completely unrelated CAR-15, the WA Supreme Court rules that the state cannot use otherwise legal exercises of constitutionally protected activity as derogatory information to influence a jury. In the original decision, there are analogous references to not using an unrelated, unpopular political position to influence a jury into drawing adverse inferences.

My take aways:
CAR-15s are a legitimate exercise of the right protected in Washington’s Constitution, Article 1, Section 24
Use of emotionally charged language by state employees could constitute due process violations, particularly in relation to protected but unpopular exercises of rights

And this brings me to Initiative 1639, which alleges to change law to treat ‘semiautomatic assault rifles” in the same manner as handguns. If you read the language of the initiative, however, their definition of a “semiautomatic assault rifle” is absolutely identical to how one might define a “semiautomatic rifle”. The word ‘assault’ adds no differentiation. If you removed the word ‘assault’ from the entire initiative, everything would legally function the same way. Here’s the point though:

I don’t think the initiative backers think the initiative would win if it just said ‘semiautomatic rifles’.

They NEED the emotional zing of the otherwise meaningless word ‘assault’. And by meaningless, I seriously mean ‘makes no factual difference at all’.

Put this together with the Rupe case above, and there’s a solid legal basis for anyone ever charged under the language of this initiative to have a Due Process case against both conviction and sentencing. The meaningless but emotionally charged word ‘assault’ could influence a jury to convict or apply tougher sentencing than a jury that was presented with technical and neutral language.

So, here’s the bottom line for Initiative 1639: Giving criminals a basis to appeal a just punishment; wrecking the lives of the innocent until the appeal come though.

Interesting precedent!
I remember reading — not sure if it was accurate — that convicted criminals can’t be charged with subsequent violations of gun registration laws because the constitutional right against self-incrimination exempts them.

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